Review: Legend of the Legendary Heroes

Genres: adventure, comedy, drama, fantasy, psychological

DUB version done by FUNIMATION

Plot Summary: Ryner Lute is a lazy student of the Roland Empire Royal Magician’s School. One day, the Roland Empire goes to war against a neighboring country Estabul, and Ryner loses his classmates in the battle. After the war, at Emperor Sion Astarl’s command, Ryner sets out on a journey to find the relics of a “Legendary Hero”. During his quest, he finds out that a deadly curse is spreading across the continent.

STORY – 3.0
For a pretty funny show, Legend of the Legendary Heroes (LoLH for short) sure starts out pretty badly.
You get the gist that something cool is in the air when Ryner and his Alpha Stigma show off some cool moves, but because the episodes don’t start out very coherently, you feel kinda lost in the shuffle. Perhaps thats also the English Dub’s fault. From a terribly portrayed betrayal of a friend you never cared for anyways, to a terribly voiced (well, dry of sorts) youth who aims to be king, all the characters came off flat (not Ryner of course) and for a while the show was in serious danger of losing its audience. Add some random time travel in a few of the episodes, and you could sum up the beginning as somewhat awkward.

However, after the 5th episode or so, things get moving: the humor blossomed with Ryner’s interaction with Ferris, and the Alpha Stigma became a great combustible power for both awesomeness and some serious discussions.
Speaking of serious discussions, the Alpha Stigma offered not-so common points to chew on. The whole laziness of Ryner was not only explained, but I felt very philosophically sound in its presentation.
Ryner’s distaste for himself, and the blood and death the Alpha Stigma always brings, was a very sound, and different look at what laziness can mean. Of course, LoLH wants the viewer to face reality and to not ignore evil (albeit if its your past and future), because peace isn’t achievable without some kind of sacrifice.

As for awesomeness, once Ryner and Ferris are together as a team to search for Legendary weapons of old, the second arc came alive so long as they are in focus. It also is spectacular that Ferris, as rough as a woman probably gets while still maintaining her feminine side, is perfectly suited to handle the lazy Ryner. Between Ferris’ Sword and fist to Ryner’s constant desire to sleep, you get not only an excellent duo, but essentially what made me get into the show a lot.

If your wondering if there’s a bad guy. well, continue to ponder that. One of the interesting things about the show is most of the characters have a true Knighthood about them and their interactions, so finding a outright bad guy is hard given the chivalry. If you had to guess, only Milan really felt evil, but you get the feeling he simply is being attracted to those of ambition, and not the culprit here. This ambiguity actually played nicely for the show. as it allowed some things not to seem too predictable (which I’ll discuss later).
As for my favorite scene? Without a doubt it would have to be towards the ending of the show , when Ferris’ life is being threatened big time by Ryner’s Alpha Stigma. The raw, majestically evil power of the Alpha Stigma along with the shining light of Ferris’ empathetic side, truly made the scene a winner. And let’s not forget Ferris either. Her history is as perverted as they come, and instantly seals your interest in her. While the material might be too mature for many, I believe it just propelled the morals of the story to greater heights.

I wish that we’re the end of it, but towards the end things pretty much fall off the edge. Here we have Ryner and Ferris being united, and the feeling of something cutely romantic budding between them them when all hell breaks loose. “Suddenly, as if in a bad dream, Ryner is in the rain and at the King’s courtyard, being attacked by the King himself while music and credits are rolling (are there two?). Sion has apparently magically recovered his mental breakdown from earlier and wields…umm, are those undead people? Ferris’ “brother” is suddenly in town (but doesn’t do anything when Ryner scores some points with Ferris, despite giving his threat regarding her), but like Milan, they soon are ignored in the show. And as if waking up out of a bad dream, we arent near the Kingdom anymore…The warring nation’s leader, is he bad or not? And what really is the Specter that claims to be Ferris’ brother?

Why are we jumping around everywhere, am I supposed to feel sad when I’m confused? and why all this sudden music… no, now your pushing multiple scenes together as if your making a poster…ah man, this is the ending!?! What in the world?”

Even after watching it over again, I still couldn’t justify the sudden changes in the show. Usually when one wants to change the narrative drastically, one adds bridges before slamming info on the viewer. I seriously thought I was watching the wrong episode until I looked it up….never a good sign.

In essence, you feel that the show was cancelled and what you were seeing was the leftover pieces of episodes that were never to be, leaving the Legend of the Legendary Heroes to rot….ouch.

EMOTIONAL DRAW – 2.9
Another show about the tale of two halves, the beginning was just lame. In fact, if not for the continuous dialogue between Ryner and Ferris, I would have quit this show. I mean first you have a terribly portrayed “friend” of Ryner’s, who you would rather punch in the nose than feel any empathy for her, even as your watching all of Ryner’s group die fiercely. No surprise dialogue, everything was predictable and limp.

However, like light is to a starving moth, Ryner and Ferris proved the show worthwhile. Their hilarious interaction (usually involving the “lecherous” beast Ryner to be smacked) lit up the whole show. I love Ferris’ tough yet kind-hearted nature, and her fierce desire to prevent the “beast” from engaging in any acts inappropriate towards the youthful “flower” and innocent women (which Ryner was never at fault of doing). This quick assumption (jealousy it turns out) provides a lot of funny material poor Ryner has to try escape from. Very witty and good-natured indeed. Ha Ha!

There are plenty of scenes that touched off nicely, particularly when Ryner starts to piece together who Ferris is (when he’s not getting smacked of course). Even the dry King wasn’t to overshadow this hilarious duo. Looking at the end, yes, I know it sucked since it ended so abruptly, but lets not forget how awesome that scene was with Ryner and Ferris towards the end. Just seeing Ferris eat dangos made you break a smile, it was very sweet.

And who knew, that Ferris and Ryner boy had their dark pasts would get so much emotion to be squeezed out? So even though the Emotional Draw was rated low, it deserved much more considering the two. I can’t repeat it enough, the main attraction of the show is clearly Ryner and Ferris.

CHARACTERS – 4.33Ryner Lute 4.9

Very solid performance in the dub version. He and Ferris hit off so well, I’m still cracking up over the jokes. Ryner’s character also was solidly developed throughout the show. Ryner’s laziness proving significant to his character, as light is shed on it, makes for solid growth in many ways. Very nice.

Ferris Eris 5.0

Without Ferris, there is no Ryner. Without Ferris, there wouldn’t be any exaggerated tales of the lecherous beast or the hilarious bashing of poor Ryner. Without a doubt, a nice character with some attitude.

Miran Froaude 4.7

Milan is a creepy dude who has little or no history, depending how you look at it. Quite the bad guy material, Milan is instead hired by Lucile to help with the wars. I love his high class villainy, and his dark magic totally fit his personality. My only sadness is Milan is practically ignored at the end, a shame when besides the two Heroes, he’s the most consistent of the characters.

Sion Astal 2.7

Although he clearly is better than many of the badly voiced characters throughout the show (not a compliment), Sion sort of fails along the way. Part I think is because the director didn’t compensate enough on his emotional faces and the rest is to his lines. Yeah, he talks like royalty, but does it have to sound so monotone? Irony says that the ending is where you find him to get interesting with that weird, unwelcomed, and certainly unexplained dual conscience that becor mes his characteat the end. But I suppose getting across the finish line limping is better than not at all.

CREATIVITY – 4.0
As you can probably tell, the last two sections score much better here. Even though the overall drawing of LOLH isn’t anything special, it pulls through nicely. When you get to any of the important figure’s clothing, you’ll find the artist’s painstakingly different designs help give a feel reminiscent of the Fire Emblem game Series. And whenever a character uses their magic, the artistic symbols are pretty cool to look at too, so all in all, a very nice setup.

Music was not too noticeable, but hit its marks where it counts. And really, from an artist’s point of perspective, that’s not a bad thing. It did just enough to get you on shore in the story, and that’s all you can ask from a music director.

OVERALL SCORE – 3.36

(The Legend of the Legendary Heroes is a funny, yet serious show that employs many cliche’s on its path to find itself. So even though it doesn’t score too well because of this, I do believe you’ll find it is quite worth watching and will have you laughing at the “lecherous” beast)